Valve, Capcom, Bethesda, Fined $9.4 Million by EU for 'Geo-Blocking

[Rizen]

Doesn't seem like a good decision. Prices should be tailored for the market, otherwise the publishers will just raise the price everywhere, screwing everyone.

I think the EU's perspective is that they are one market. That is essentially the biggest advantage of joining the EU, the trade agreements that effectively allow you to do business across the whole EU.

It doesn't really work that way in practice, however. When I was in Amsterdam, Netherlands, for example, hotel rates were 3x higher than Estonia, both of which are EU countries.

 

[bman212121]

I'm definitely not saying I have the solution to that answer, it's a tough nut to crack. But at the end of the day the reason why it's a problem is because the company is selling their product in an unregulated market at a reduced price. Don't sell your product in a market were people can side skirt the issue, then you don't have to worry. Sell your product in those markets and inherit the headache that comes along with it. The main thing I'm against is having a system that flat out allows companies to profit from something, but then be given immunity to all of the can of worms that comes along with it. Geo-blocking is basically that.

 

[Rizen]

I didn't read through the whole thread before my initial comment but, unsurprisingly, it has derailed into people crying socialism. Price ceilings and floors are common in capitalist economies. The definition of socialism isn't "everything I don't like", and every capitalist economy on Earth still has regulations.

 

[DukenukemX]

This is the major reason why there is regional based pricing in the first place. In Vietnam as an example the average GDP is $3500 (GPD nominal). If you think most people can afford a $60 game, you're wrong. But if you can turn them into a customer, even at $5 it's worth more to the devs to make that money than to price it at $60 and just have everyone in an entire region just pirate the game.

If you bought a game then you own the game, and that's the problem with geo-blocking. It's same idea as region lock out which everyone hates and doesn't see a purpose for it other than to extract as much money as possible. They mention countries like Czechia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This is a big problem because you don't own the product you purchased, which is a big no no in EU. You may not like it, but it's a lot better than being able to resell your digital goods online, which is where this will go if geo-blocking continues.

Saying it should just be cheaper everywhere is missing the point and the issue (and would also just make making AAA games impossible financially).

See this guy? His name is Bobby Kotick and he's extremely wealthy. One of the most overpaid CEO's in America. You can afford to lower prices. Stop making games exclusive to platforms and port your games, because it's obviously far more profitable. Stop spending half the cost of AAA games on advertising and let the Youtubers do it for you for free. Valve could make Half Life 3, or Portal 3, or anything 3.

You can have your opinion - but straight up from an economics standpoint having region based pricing solves a huge amount of issues.

If you're unwilling to lower prices, then sure. I'm willing to bet you will lower prices because the next step is forced resell of digital goods. The used gaming market has solved many of the overpriced gaming markets problems.

Pricing would be the same in the US (and everywhere else obviously) and these companies would just end up losing money as essentially entire markets would pirate.

I don't see a problem with this.

So arguing that they shouldn't be able to sell games for $60 in the US and then $5-$10 in Vietnam is literally just dumb and doesn't benefit the consumer it's supposed to be "protecting" or the company.

How many people in Vietnam actually buy games? I'm willing to bet they pirate like crazy over there. Holy shit, it's at 74%.

And to be clear this obviously also affects Indy devs who can use region based pricing to also maximize their profits for the exact same reasons. That shouldn't really require any additional explanation.

Yea but their games are generally $10-$15 so it doesn't effect them as much. I bought Nights into Dreams for $1 during Valve's sale. My advice is to put games on perma sale in those countries and hope nobody outside finds out. It's no different when you use FireFox instead of Chrome to book a flight and it's cheaper somehow because FireFox users tend to be thriftier.

 

[Red Falcon]

No, that wouldn't work, since the Americans (or wealthier countries in EU) would just buy at the cheaper price (using VPN or whatever) meaning everyone is paying $5 and the developers would go out of business.

I was thinking about this as well, and this is why we can't have nice things.
So at the end of the day, either the 'customer' is the thief, the corporation is the thief, or the government is the thief, and someone somewhere... gets a Ferrari.

I didn't read through the whole thread before my initial comment but, unsurprisingly, it has derailed into people crying socialism. Price ceilings and floors are common in capitalist economies. The definition of socialism isn't "everything I don't like", and every capitalist economy on Earth still has regulations.

 

[bman212121]

No, that wouldn't work, since the Americans (or wealthier countries in EU) would just buy at the cheaper price (using VPN or whatever) meaning everyone is paying $5 and the developers would go out of business.

Would they though? Do you think the average consumer is going to go through that kind of hassle? There are already sites that can streamline the process and people aren't using them. If selling a game in an unregulated market is going to cause them to go out of business, then maybe they shouldn't be selling in that market? If your ability to sell your product is going to cause all of your suppliers to not buy from you but buy from a 3rd party because you're giving them a much better deal then maybe you need to rethink your business model. Once again I'm not saying I have the answer to that, but artificially locking a product to allow you to profit from it isn't the answer.

 

[DukenukemX]

I didn't read through the whole thread before my initial comment but, unsurprisingly, it has derailed into people crying socialism. Price ceilings and floors are common in capitalist economies. The definition of socialism isn't "everything I don't like", and every capitalist economy on Earth still has regulations.

Anything I don't like I tend to point out how bad capitalism is, because I think capitalism is evil as hell. Which geo-blocking is very much a crony capitalist move, but removing geo-blocking isn't socialism. If anything it's democracy working as intended. The people didn't want it, and they voted against it, and the politicians listened and acted upon it. This isn't Fox News which saying it's socialism doesn't mean it's socialism. They didn't seize the means of production, they're just telling you to stop fucking around with digital ownership because geo-blocking literally prevents people from using the product they purchased. It's equivalent to buying a car sold outside of your country and then you can't start it because of region blocking. It's fucked up.

 

[Red Falcon]

Anything I don't like I tend to point out how bad capitalism is, because I think capitalism is evil as hell. Which geo-blocking is very much a crony capitalist move, but removing geo-blocking isn't socialism. If anything it's democracy working as intended. The people didn't want it, and they voted against it, and the politicians listened and acted upon it.

And I tend to point out how Socialism and Communism have both historically done, and how millions of people over the last 100+ years have died under those forms of governments via democide.
It's kind of hard to call Capitalism "evil" when millions of people haven't died under that form of government; what you speak of isn't Capitalism, it's Corporatism - those are two VERY different things, and Corporatism is completely synonymous with Socialism.

Corporatism "is a political ideology which advocates the organization of society by corporate groups, such as agricultural, labor, military, scientific, or guild associations, on the basis of their common interests. The term is derived from the Latin corpus, or "human body"." - that sounds a lot like Socialism.

Capitalism "is an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state." - so it isn't state-owned and is privately run - what exactly is "evil" about that?


^ From everything you say, it sounds less like you hate Capitalism, and more so like you hate Corporatism.
There is a clear difference:


^ From that, and everything you dislike about these markets, it really seems like you hate Corporatism.

They didn't seize the means of production, they're just telling you to stop fucking around with digital ownership because geo-blocking literally prevents people from using the product they purchased. It's equivalent to buying a car sold outside of your country and then you can't start it because of region blocking. It's fucked up.

I agree with you on this, and game publishers and developers like Capcom do need to stop with this nonsense.


^ With that, the dark cyberpunk future steps out of science fiction and has quickly become our reality - going strong since 2020.

 

[DukenukemX]

It's kind of hard to call Capitalism "evil" when millions of people haven't died under that form of government; what you speak of isn't Capitalism, it's Corporatism - those are two VERY different things, and Corporatism is completely synonymous with Socialism.

We gonna derail this thread now? Sure.. why not. Corporatism is just capitalism that has gotten out of control and took control of the government through bribery and lobbying. Corporatism is a feature of capitalism.

And I tend to point out how bad Socialism and Communism, and how the millions of people over the last 100+ have died under those forms of governments via democide.

We tend to ignore how many people die when companies dump their waste near peoples homes and causes sickness that will kill them. Or how Firestone used defective rubber on tires that killed people. Whenever a corner is cut to save money, that's a capitalist move. If that corner cutting ends up killing someone, then that's a capitalistic death. Those are much harder to count than dictatorships who kill their people.

Capitalism "is an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state."

Capitalism is not a political system at all, just economic. China for example is capitalist, socialist, and communist all at once. China is Authoritarian capitalism.

so it isn't state-owned and is privately run - what exactly is "evil" about that?

Profit motives are generally evil as companies aren't exactly concerned about peoples well being. When government steps in to regulate businesses like removing geo-blcoking, that isn't socialism. That's democracy working as intended. As a corporation you stepped outside your boundary of just selling a good, to regulating what people do with said good. Therefore either no good was sold or said company is overstepping their power and circumventing capitalism.

 

[Krenum]

I have a solution. Don't pay a price you don't want to pay.

 

[Krenum]

Capitalist is not a political system at all, just economic. China for example is capitalist, socialist, and communist all at once. China is Authoritarian capitalism.

China did a good job at masking their agenda to the rest of the world over the years & to you too apparently. Make no mistake China is a communist nation.

 

[Red Falcon]

We gonna derail this thread now? Sure.. why not. Corporatism is just capitalism that has gotten out of control and took control of the government through bribery and lobbying. Corporatism is a feature of capitalism.


We tend to ignore how many people die when companies dump their waste near peoples homes and causes sickness that will kill them. Or how Firestone used defective rubber on tires that killed people. Whenever a corner is cut to save money, that's a capitalist move. If that corner cutting ends up killing someone, then that's a capitalistic death. Those are much harder to count than dictatorships who kill their people.

Capitalism is not a political system at all, just economic. China for example is capitalist, socialist, and communist all at once. China is Authoritarian capitalism.

Profit motives are generally evil as companies aren't exactly concerned about peoples well being. When government steps in to regulate businesses like removing geo-blcoking, that isn't socialism. That's democracy working as intended. As a corporation you stepped outside your boundary of just selling a good, to regulating what people do with said good. Therefore either no good was sold or said company is overstepping their power and circumventing capitalism.

I edited my original post a bit, and again, it sounds less like you hate Capitalism (non-corrupt) and more so that you hate Corporatism (corrupt/crony/authoritarian).
I also didn't mean to derail the thread, but thought that these topics were relevant to the conversation and the topic at hand, hence why I brought them up.




All of that aside, I want you to know that none of this is directed at you - just hoping to have a friendly and insightful discussion with you because I do value your thoughts and opinions, especially on subjects like these.

 

[UnknownSouljer]

If you bought a game then you own the game, and that's the problem with geo-blocking. It's same idea as region lock out which everyone hates and doesn't see a purpose for it other than to extract as much money as possible. They mention countries like Czechia, Poland, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. This is a big problem because you don't own the product you purchased, which is a big no no in EU. You may not like it, but it's a lot better than being able to resell your digital goods online, which is where this will go if geo-blocking continues.

This is an issue with RTFA. Most of what I was talking about what specifically region based pricing. I wasn't apparently paying attention enough to know that this was essentially region based blocking. FWIW I do advocate for ownership over everything we buy.

See this guy? His name is Bobby Kotick and he's extremely wealthy. One of the most overpaid CEO's in America. You can afford to lower prices. Stop making games exclusive to platforms and port your games, because it's obviously far more profitable. Stop spending half the cost of AAA games on advertising and let the Youtubers do it for you for free. Valve could make Half Life 3, or Portal 3, or anything 3.
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Pointing at one rich CEO is a terrible way to govern an entire market. Making policies that are, say, anti-microsoft that also affect companies that are say 5 people makes zero sense. Should small indies not be able to price games at $60? Should they be force to hire 100 employees just so they can port to every gaming device? I would say no. If for no other reason than they literally can't afford to.

If you're unwilling to lower prices, then sure. I'm willing to bet you will lower prices because the next step is forced resell of digital goods. The used gaming market has solved many of the overpriced gaming markets problems.

I would welcome used digital games. But again I think I've addressed specifically region based pricing and why it's a model that is important and works. Just not "region locking" which I again think we both agree on.

I don't see a problem with this.

You should. Piracy hurts everyone and essentially just makes there be less entrants into the market. Again this will likely hurt companies like EA and Valve less and it will hurt smaller companies more. If you're a 20 million gross annual revenue company (with say $1 million or so in profit) getting all this cut out from under you matters a lot more than if you're EA and you have 1 billion in gross revenue coming to you.

How many people in Vietnam actually buy games? I'm willing to bet they pirate like crazy over there. Holy shit, it's at 74%.

So your goal is to make it worse?

Yea but their games are generally $10-$15 so it doesn't effect them as much. I bought Nights into Dreams for $1 during Valve's sale. My advice is to put games on perma sale in those countries and hope nobody outside finds out. It's no different when you use FireFox instead of Chrome to book a flight and it's cheaper somehow because FireFox users tend to be thriftier.

Right, so that's essentially what I'm saying... which is weird because above you say you disagree with region based pricing, and here you're saying you do agree with region based pricing.

I have a solution. Don't pay a price you don't want to pay.

That doesn't actually help the situation. In that case you just have piracy.

 

[DukenukemX]

I edited my original post a bit, and again, it sounds less like you hate Capitalism (non-corrupt) and more so that you hate Corporatism (corrupt/crony/authoritarian).

No matter what you call it, if it profits then it's capitalism. If it profits too much and creates monopolies that is then used to control markets and government, then it's capitalism++. People like to think that just because you give it a new name that all the wrong that happens is only associated with that name. Corporatism is still birthed from capitalism. And yes, I hate capitalism with all forms it takes. The only good thing about capitalism is that it will inevitably destroy itself, if it hasn't already.

Pointing at one rich CEO is a terrible way to govern an entire market.

How is the entire video game market doing? I don't hear any of these companies not being extremely profitable. People keep saying that if we lower prices then the industry will suffer, but as far as I can tell the industry is doing fantastic while employee's still deal with crunch time.

Should small indies not be able to price games at $60?

You can price it however you want, just be mindful of the consequences.

Should they be force to hire 100 employees just so they can port to every gaming device? I would say no. If for no other reason than they literally can't afford to.

You do realize that porting games to other platforms is profitable? The most profitable games of all times are multi-platform. If you're Sony and Nintendo and still make exclusives then your games aren't making as much money if it was ported to PC and Xbox. Microsoft seems to be porting their games so they're off the hook... for now. The only reason Sony and Nintendo aren't porting their exclusives is because they profit a lot more from the 30% cut they get from other games sales on their platform. The games themselves are selling just fine, and would sell a lot better on PC other platforms. If these companies don't like porting their games then they can also deal with the consequences of their decisions. Sony is especially more money hungry by increasing the prices of their PS5 games to $70. You price your games up then you price yourself out of markets. That's not the consumers problem.

You should. Piracy hurts everyone and essentially just makes there be less entrants into the market.

Then lower prices. I can't control pirates but they can by lowering prices. Piracy will always be a thing and the only reasons people don't seek it is because they want to support developers and they don't have time to download games with viruses and cracks. There was a report that Apple computers were infected with a bitcoin miner that has been going on for many years now, and it's acquired by downloading pirated software.

Again this will likely hurt companies like EA and Valve less and it will hurt smaller companies more.

Then smaller companies shouldn't emulate EA and Valve, because nobody likes the direction they've gone as a company. Also they probably can't due to finances. They are Indie game studios.

 

[sfsuphysics]

I have a solution. Don't pay a price you don't want to pay.

Yeah but saying that people don't have an inalienable human right to be entertained with vidya games is just wrong!

 

[sfsuphysics]

Would they though? Do you think the average consumer is going to go through that kind of hassle?

I think you're onto something. Because the question isn't would they... but "couldn't they have done that already?" and if so why has video game sales reached record numbers... answer, people with money are going to do it because fuckall why not?